Death Thieves

by Julie Wright

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I trust we won’t have any more instances of your presence in the barracks.”

  “Of course not, sir. I understand your decision.” I saw Tag alive and well. I figured out how to communicate with him. I got exactly what I’d gone for.

  I smiled at the professor and would have turned that smile on Tag since everything worked out okay and neither of us was likely to be executed any time soon, but Tag was gone.

  We stood on the sidewalk and watched the car drive away. “He’s an amazing man.” The worship in Eddie’s voice irritated me.

  “You are such a suck-up, Eddie,” I said.

  At Eddie’s confusion, Jay jumped in. “She means brownnoser, kiss up, teacher’s pet, sellout—”

  “Hey, I saved you.” Eddie insisted as Jay moved toward the front doors.

  “No, you embarrassed me and caused a riot. Nothing to be proud of, champ.”

  Eddie fumed, but we’d already shifted to ignore-Eddie mode. Once we’d moved past Kathleen’s desk and into the casual room, we realized something exciting must have happened while we were gone because everyone had gathered.

  I found a corner to stand in and take several steadying breaths. Jay found a short, blonde girl and casually put an arm over her shoulder. That must be Jennifer. He whispered something in her ear, and she laughed. She turned to him, explaining something with great animation. I moved to join them when a hand fell on my shoulder. I turned to meet Tag’s eyes.

  “Where did you come from?” I whispered. He seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  “Your room. Your quilt is on your bed—under the top cover. And a couple of pictures. I found pictures that had duplicates of you and your sister in an album that belonged to your aunt. I admit it worried me a bit when returning to see what might have changed. It’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but everything seems as it was.”

  “Won’t you get caught?”

  “Not if you’re careful. All the New Youths are gathered. No one has reason to track Orbitals at this time. Just in case, I didn’t take my assigned Orbital. But I know you need those things. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

  “Are you kidding? Thank you, Tag. You cannot know how much that means to me.”

  His hand was still on my shoulder, yet I felt his fingers lacing lightly in my hair. “I do know. Truly. I’d better get back before I’m missed, but, Summer, thank you for worrying enough about me to come find me. It’s been a long time since anyone cared or worried, well . . . thank you.”

  He exited the room before I could say anything else.

  When I composed myself enough to talk to the others, I joined Jay. “So what’s all the excitement?”

  “Oh, hey! Summer, you’ll never guess. We are all the excitement.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” the girl I assumed to be Jennifer said. “It was all over the news. Everyone heard Professor Raik tell the world about us. They projected the news reports on the wall. Crazy stuff.”

  “Careful using that word.” Alison had come up behind us. “Seriously. I’ve heard people have been killed over calling someone else crazy.”

  Jennifer just shrugged. Jay, likely thinking about his little experience with calling someone crazy, cleared his throat.

  Jay swatted my arm, “Oh hey! Summer, I’d like you to meet Jennifer.”

  I smiled and we went to the usual questions: When are you from, and how did you die?

  After only a few moments, I decided Jay’s love-at-first-sight was perfect for him.

  We went to dinner together and told stories about our lives throughout the decades. We also shared things we’d learned about IDRs, lapdesks, the Internet, our access to information, and the world around us. Jay had discovered that the regents all had access to energy coming from a source called Tesla’s Ether. That was how they powered their flying cars and vast estates. Alison talked a lot about her nails. I didn’t talk much at all. I listened and absorbed what I heard.

  They had all decided to catch a movie in the theater. I claimed to be tired and hurried to my room. Relief flooded through me as I pulled my sun quilt around me and breathed deeply into it for a long time. Tucking my hand under my pillow, my fingers felt the edges of paper. I pulled them out. There were three. He’d found the photo of Wineve and me the day we both got our driver’s licenses. Our arms were wrapped around each other. Keys dangled from our hands as we stood between Theresa’s and Paul’s cars.

  The other photo was when Theresa and Paul took us to Disneyland. It was the one and only time we’d ever been to Disneyland in our whole lives. We were fifteen years old and had just come off Splash Mountain. It was a stroke of luck that Mickey Mouse had come by at the same moment we walked off the ride. We got our picture taken with him in our soaked clothes, our hair clinging to our faces.

  The last was a picture Theresa had taken when she first got us. We were twelve. I barely remembered being that young. Theresa told us to give each other a hug for the picture. When we did, she said words that never left me. “You remember this, girls; remember that no matter what the world does to you, you will always be sisters.”

  Always sisters. I didn’t cry but instead cuddled into my quilt and tucked myself under the bedspread provided to me by the regents or whoever got us all our stuff, I carefully placed the pictures into my pillowcase and went to sleep peacefully for the first time in over a week.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Life as a student settled into routine. The “blackboard” was like a great big computer screen projected on the wall. It had net connection, so the teacher could do research on something we might have questions on right there in the middle of class. And though this was something schools from my time were already establishing, it was outright miraculous to those from older generations and completely boring to those from later years.

  Meals, classes, social activities, and little field trips inspired by Jay’s curiosity, were all part of the routine. Jay loved the movie theaters since they engaged all five senses. If something exploded on screen, the seats in the theater rumbled. If there was a tornado on screen, wind blew in from somewhere. Taste and smell came from pulse power on the rings that coded into the theater’s main computer when our rings were scanned. Technology hadn’t advanced as much as I would have imagined, though. Some things felt archaic and clunky like the lapdesks; others were incredibly innovated like the IDRs and flying cars. The disparity between dark ages and invention was crazy huge, but when the world goes crazy, crazy things were bound to happen.

  The fact that my old phone had more capabilities and apps than the IDR had made me shake my head. People had no idea what they were missing.

  And a greater part of my routine became my science classes, specifically biology. The disease that made this future steal me from my death both fascinated and repulsed me. I studied its history, its affects, and its complete takeover of the human body. I wanted to understand the disease, wanted to be more than a brood mare to help humanity, wanted to solve the problem that currently plagued mankind—to fix the chasm of class between New Youths and the rest of the world.

  I’d also become addicted to the library, going whenever a free moment presented itself. Lots of people went to the library as it offered the most versatile gaming and entertainment opportunity, but even more, people went for the books. The sheer volume of books checked out and returned on a daily basis staggered me. I’d never seen such a busy library in all my life and I loved it, though I hated the way people looked down in deference when they passed me.

  Books could be downloaded through the IDR and pulsed onto whatever media display was available, but the tactile experience seemed to be the one people wanted. And not all books could be downloaded for public consumption. None of the science books I needed or books on the HTH infection were available for download. They were all hardbound and only accessible through the library.

  Though the research I’d done kept me interested in th
e library, it was the notes that helped me bear the tension between me and the populace when I ventured out. The notes I found tucked into A Sliver of Midnight were my private oasis in a world that seemed to be constantly spinning. At Tag’s urging, I was careful never to go on Wednesdays as that was one of his few freedoms, and if anyone suspected he communicated with me, he would lose that freedom.

  We’d resorted to using code names for each other in case someone ever found our scrawled messages. Tag started calling me Sunny, and as a play on his name I started calling him Yourit as in the game Tag (Tag! You’re it!). Having never played the game of tag as a child, he didn’t get the joke, but I thought it was pretty funny.

  5-26-2113

  Morning, Yourit!

  J rented us a flying car and took me and a few others to our childhood homes. It’s still there, Yourit, Theresa’s house is still there! I thought it was lost in the mud slide, but it’s still there along with all the other houses on Theresa’s hillside. They look abandoned though—like full of snakes and spiders abandoned. I wanted to go in, but our driver got a call that we weren’t allowed to be outside city limits without special permission. The driver took us back to the dorms, where Kathleen gave us a forty-eight minute lecture on taking advantage of our positions as the New Youth and explaining that none of us had the funds available to make that journey, but that the driver had been too afraid of saying no to us.

  J doesn’t think it’s about the money but about control. I can go either way on that argument. But Theresa’s house is there! I only wish I knew where Wineve’s grave was.

  Sunny

  Learning to live within the limits of the future took time. I’d never worried about curfew even when Aunt Theresa so dutifully placed curfews on me. News of riots or vandalism or attacks started by crazies who’d been hidden by their parents were common. Most of the bad stuff happened at the dark levels. It seemed the people who lived in the dark—in that perpetual night—had a far more violent life than the ones who lived in the higher levels.

  Their pale faces glowed against the light from the cameras. They always turned their heads as though such intense light hurt their eyes. The news also showed the soldiers with their Tasers and sleeping gases beating back angry crowds in the thick of riots. On the news, the soldiers looked like cruel oppressors. It surprised me how many of those soldiers were women. They all seemed so violent and angry. I was always grateful never to see Tag in the riots on the screens.

  The news stations replayed those attacks in the dark levels over and over on the net. Such information made it hard to forget that the world was unstable and venturing out at night wasn’t safe.

  “I found it,” Jay whispered over breakfast one morning.

  “Found what?” I glanced around to make sure Eddie wasn’t hovering nearby. If Jay whispered, it meant he had something to say that Eddie would tattle on us for.

  “A way to the dark level. I went last night.”

  “What?” I said, my mouth full of cream and crepes hanging open in surprise.

  “How?” Jen asked. It was just the three of us sitting at the table that morning, everyone else had either slept in or had room service.

  “Service elevators.” Jay beamed.

  Jen smirked and tapped her fork on her plate. “Your IDR works in the service elevators?”

  “Nope, but Dennis’s does.”

  “Who’s Dennis?” I’d chewed too fast and swallowed hard, making it hurt as the food went down.

  “He works in the kitchen. I wanted a burger with onion rings late one night. He made it up for me. I started talking to him. It took a while for him to warm up enough to be willing to talk much back, but I made a point of going to visit the kitchens every night since then. He’s totally rad!”

  Jen laughed every time Jay said the word rad. She also laughed at bogus.

  Jay ignored her giggling at his out-of-date expressions. “Last night, he invited me down for a game of poker with him and his friends. It was so cool! Dude, it was the best time I’ve had since being here. They didn’t act all stuck-up like lots of the guys here in the dorms. Want to come with me tonight?”

  Jen agreed simply because she loved being with Jay no matter where he was going or what he’d schemed up. I agreed out of curiosity. Were the dark levels as bad as reported? Were the diseased riffraff really riffraff? Or maybe there were pockets of people with no disease hiding in the dark. Tag had said something about such a thing existing. I wanted to see for myself. So much of our information felt fed to us. I wanted to know if what we saw on the news matched the reality.

  “So how did you get down?” Jen asked.

  “I took off my ring and left it here in the dining room by the plants, where no one would find it until I came back.”

  “That’s how I got into the barracks,” I said.

  Jay’s grin broadened. “I know.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you think that’s weird? Why wouldn’t they assume people would do stuff like that?”

  “Fear.” Jen said this before Jay could. “They’ve made everyone afraid to step out of line. People won’t go where they aren’t supposed to be because crazies might get them, or the government might accuse them of being crazies. I really don’t think people consider going where their rings don’t allow. Why would they risk getting caught?”

  All excellent points and ones I’d witnessed firsthand. People in the sky gardens and marketplaces avoided me when they saw me coming. People recognized New Youths and steered clear. And all Professor Raik had to say was that we were under the protection of the government. I still stuck to my original thought that killing off all the crazies had culled art out of society, but the longer I stayed within the society, the more I realized it culled out risk-taking and intelligence as well. Very few of the people left were capable of independent or creative thought.

  We made plans to meet in the dining hall after lights normally went out—after curfew. My heart jumped in my throat just considering being out after curfew. I’ve wondered many times during the day if the IDRs tracked when we took them off, and I’ve wondered many times more if we’d be ex-ed for being out after curfew if we got caught. As we waited for Dennis, Jay imparted his new knowledge of the day. “They don’t have fire escapes because the buildings are fireproof. The walls and floorings are all made out of that same stuff they make dishes out of. That stuff doesn’t burn.” Jay went off for several minutes more about Tesla’s Ether and how the government was selfishly withholding the one source of energy that would allow people electricity at no cost and with no damaging environmental effects.

  Jay quieted his rants when Dennis showed up and led us down into the belly of the city.

  What kind of ugly is hiding under the beauty suit?

  The elevator doors opened. We stepped out into a world entirely unlike the one we lived in. I’d forgotten how the ground under me swayed above the dark levels until I’d taken those first few steps at ground level.

  The smell hit me first. It smelled dank—the humidity and rot combining to make my gag reflex kick in. The lighting pulsed through green tubes lining the ceilings like huge glow sticks, making the ground floor of the building look ethereal and frightening. Jen huddled closer to Jay, and he put an arm around her in a position of instinctive protection. I crowded in next to them. Dennis, our guide, turned to us and smiled, his teeth bright in the glow of the light.

  “Should we turn on some real lights?” Jay asked, trying to abate our nerves a little with something normal.

  “Lumes are all we got here.” Dennis shrugged like we were dumb for thinking there was anything else and what they had was good enough anyway.

  “Lumes.” Jay repeated the word and glanced around the littered floor of what seemed to have once been a hotel lobby.

  “Some people have leds, but most use lumes. Cheaper. Cheaper’s better when the cost of electrics keep goin’ up. Cheaper totally spins. C’mon.” Dennis waved us to follow him. I was surprised that Dennis’s declar
ation of the electrics costs didn’t send Jay into another rant on Tesla’s Ether.

  “Are we on the ground now?” I asked, grateful Jen and I had worn jeans since everything felt grimy. Even the air I breathed seemed dirty down here, though I knew that had to be just my imagination. “The real ground?”

  Dennis nodded. “Go outside and see for yourself.”

  There were revolving glass doors to my right and after a brief hesitation, I pushed through the doors and found myself breathing in cold, humid air—my feet tapping on hard normal cement. The cement had cracks and was obviously worn, but it felt normal and unmoving under my feet in a way nothing had felt since coming to the future.

  Plant life existed at ground level, but it was all either a pale sickly green color or a pale sickly white, rather than the rich deep greens of the sky gardens. Across the street, multicolored lights spun and reflected from the windows. People had trickled out from that building and into the street—people, music, laughter, noise. The atmosphere reminded me of the few dance clubs I’d sneaked into during the summer with Nathan.

  “It’s after curfew,” Jay said, twisting around so much to take everything in, it made my head ache to watch.

  “Is it always like this?” Jen asked. “Isn’t anyone worried about the soldiers?”

  “Naw. It’s July fourth. Time to spin. Soldiers aren’t usually around topside.”

  “Topside?” I asked. This was the ground—definitely not topside.

  “Yeah down under, things get pretty rough.” When we continued to stare at Dennis like he had ten heads, he said, “You know, in the basement and tunnel apartments. The soldiers spend more time patrolling down there. Anyway, today is a holiday. The holiday spins! Tomorrow night, people will go home, watch their net if they’ve got ’em, eat their dinners if they’ve got ’em. People will stay inside.”

  Jen shook her head. “It is the fourth. I can’t believe I forgot. And they didn’t even mention it in class or anything. Not a word.”